As it turns out, that is a pretty serious offense... the last time I dropped anchor in the wrong place, I ended up in the drunk tank at the county jail with both indecent exposure and drunk in public charges.

Most of the alternative explantions were even more far-feteched, like the idea that the US would need to cut a cable in order to tap it (we have nuclear submarines built specifically for the purpose of not tipping our hand when we tap undersea cables).

We have no motivaiton to mess with Iran *in that way* right now. At current oil prices the current Iranian government is certain to collapse. The best thing we can possibly do right now to mess with Iran is to make it as hard as possible for the current Iranian goverment to distract it people from internal problems by giving them an external enemy.

Iran's demographics favor a serious culture shift soon. The ruling theocracy has dealt with this repeatedly in the past by going to war, often wars so nasty th

At current oil prices the current Iranian government is certain to collapse.

They once had a parliamentary democracy of course, but the leader, Mossadegh, committed the heinous crime of trying to get a better oil deal for his country. This resulted in the US and UK backing a coup which installed the Shah of Iran, a dictator who would rule with an Iron fist for decades. His CIA-trained secret police (the SAVAK) tortured and murdered thousands. The inevitable backlash unfortunately resulted in a theocracy rather than the democracy the people we hoping for.

Iran's demographics favor a serious culture shift soon. The ruling theocracy has dealt with this [b]repeatedly in the past by going to war[/b], often wars so nasty that they killed off the majority of males in their 20s, directly changing the demographics.

Iran has not attacked another country for centuries. Iraq started the war with Iran and was supported by the US, UK and others. It was a devastating war but rather than trying to stop it, we poured fuel on the fire hoping that Saddam would win. The support for Iraq was so great that the US even tried to blame the Iranians for Saddam's chemical attack on Halabja. So we wreck one democracy and install a dictator. Then when he is overthrown we back the neighbouring dictator in a devastating war.

Do you seriously doubt that Iran has serious economic difficulties, and is proping itself up with oil money? Here's a recent cite [rferl.org]; Google finds dozens.

Do you seriously doubt that the demographic shift in Iran threatens the party in power? Most of the links I could find had an axe to grind in American politics, but this one [alternet.org] has lots of actual data.

Do you seriously think Iran's government could benefit by starting a war with America by attacking Iraq right now? It's not like we have a tripwire base there, like we did in Korea for so many years: we have most of our armed forces mobilized in Iraq, and regime change in Iran is still official US policy.

I'm sorry to puncture your conspiracy theory so thoroughly, but the idea that the US would be cutting data cables used by a large chunk of the world just to mess with Iran is simply not rational.

Seriously, this isn't exactly a controversial point. Iran has *huge* government subsidies for the poor, but its theocracy is not otherwise popular (and even if they just stop having elections, a government needs money to exist).

Yeah, I was surprised to learn that too. But the effect was quite noticable as soon as it was cut, on NIPR, SIPR, and JWICS. I saw the briefing on what happened and some more detailed explanation of how much was lost on each network. Ironically, the MWR internet cafe was far faster than work because it ran solely on satellite.

So the cables were cut as part of a conspiracy by George Bush so that he can use the new anti
terrorist laws in order to keep control of the country while secretly being guided by the Rothschild Illuminati, the under cover aliens who
landed in Roswell in order to crash UFO's disguised as passenger jets into the World Trade Center as ordered by the intergalactic banking
cartel?

Why does everyone assume it had to be the US? Iran is not very popular in the region, you know. It could be Israel, it could be agents for one of the Sunni countries in the region, or hell it could just be a small anti-Iranian group wanting to make life in Iran suck a little more. But just because it smells of sabotage doesn't automatically mean the US did it.

We got too much crap going on trying to keep our economy afloat for it to be us IMHO. It just doesn't make any sense for the US to stir up shit there when we are stretched thin as it is and the price of oil is down so IMO the LAST thing we would be doing is trying to stir up more shit in the region which could cause oil prices to climb at a moment when it could hurt us the worst. so if it turns out to be sabotage we should be looking at who BESIDES the USA hates Iran and would like to see them hurt.

I agree with that. One of the more interesting and plausible theories at the time was that it was a sign that we may soon invade Iran (they were the worst cut-off from the internet at the time). Thankfully that wasn't true.

They wouldn't necessarily need to tap the cable there. As the first linked article says, "Most of the B to B traffic between Europe and Asia is rerouted through the USA." Where no doubt it could be eavesdropped on more conveniently.

My current favourite is the far-fetched and still unexplained (good luck gettng Israel to own up to this one):

Israeli Art Student Mystery [salon.com], when at the beginning of 2001, the American DEA were flooded by large numbers of fake Israeli art students.

They were Israeli but not really students, some carried classified information on USA agents and locations, some had large denominations of cash or evidence of having moved large denominations around (up to $180,000 over a coup

I bang my head when I read statements like that. The US already has an established history doing exactly this type stuff against the USSR and other countries. Simply put, calling those "alternative explanations", "far fetched", is nothing but ridiculous. In fact, that statement in of it self is "far fetched."

Now then, this does not mean it has to be anything other than what is publicly known, just the same, given the US' history of doing exactly these types of operations against the USSR and other countries, it is borderline idiocy to outright dismiss such arguments; especially given the odds of such things happening. You do know ships these days have very nice GPS/LORAN systems which tell them exactly where they shouldn't go and/or drop anchor? In other words, the chances of the publicly disclosed story being 100% true are actually pretty slim.

I find it funny so many people are so willing to dismiss a more likely explanation with one which is far, far more unlikely. If you think about it, it is actually pretty funny.

You think the US cut these cables, on exactly the same amount of proof as the theory that it was done by aliens: none.

You think this is more probable than the facts that not all ships have the latest technology (especially in the thrid world), and the last time this happened ships were being allowed to anchor in an area (near the cables) that they hadn't been allowed before.

But even though there's no evidence of foul play, and no evidence that if there *were* fould play that the US did it, and even though i

The Los Angeles class is no longer the latest 'n' greatest. The Seawolf class has been tested to 610 meters, e.g. about 2000 feet. Also, one of the Seawolf class, the Jimmy Carter, was specifically modified for "special underwater operations", putatively for SEAL team deployments and such, but who's to say...?

That's funny, I was going to say the same thing until I realized that I honestly didn't know that. It turns out a league is 4 km (in the modern metric system at least). Even in Journey to the Center of the Earth they didn't go nearly that deep.

There was a program on the History Channel several years back on a research effort to learn more about the Titanic disaster (at least, I think it was the Titanic) by studying the wreck closely. The US Navy volunteered their "research" nuclear sub to help out with the project. The researchers weren't quite sure where the wreck was on the ocean floor, but the Navy suggested that they have special-purpose sonar that's really, really good at finding lengths of cable, and would that help?

I remember laughing about that at the time. The program made no mention of *why* the sub would have that particular technology developed to levels unheard of by civilian shipwreck-finding experts.

We do? Since when? You mean subs can go past 20,000 and not crush like eggs? We can't even retrieve the cables, we just lay new ones....

There's no need to go that deep, if your sub is stealthy enough to work undetected in water of a more reasonable depth. Operation Ivy Bells [specialoperations.com] is an example from long enough ago that's it's public knowledge. I suspect the US would still be keeping even that secret, but Russia put the wiretap device on display in a public museum (the old KGB headquarters), so the cat was pretty much out of the bag.

A typical manned sub can't go that deep because it's hollow on the inside. A robotic sub that's tethered to it can.

How deep do you really think the Mediterranean is, though? I'll give you a hint: it's less than 5,000 feet deep on average and shallower along the coastlines. The convenient thing about an undersea cable when you go to tap it is that it's connected to a communications building on land somewhere. We're not, as I understand it, interested in tapping the internal communications of deep sea colonies just yet. So perhaps, just perhaps, a submarine wouldn't have to go to the deepest part of the oceans to tap an undersea cable that is guaranteed to come above the water's surface at its endpoint.

I suggest you read "Blind Man's Bluff", which explains how we used such a sub to tap a russian undersea cable to great effect.

Of course, when the russians finally discovered the breach and dug up the cable, they were somewhat amused to see the giant plaque on the side of the bug proclaiming it to be "Property of the United States of America."

Considering how old that technology now is, I'm sure that by now they have even more advanced toys to play with.

Did you think that the fiber is one long piece stretching right across the ocean ? Because it isn't. There are repeater modules every kilometre (IIRC) which boost the signal and send it on. If a few of those are more than just repeaters (ie splitters) then it becomes trivial to grab a copy of all data that runs through that fibre. If there is redundant fibre in the cable, then conceivably, every fibre carrying data has a copy which runs right to where the govt. wants it.I used to work for Nortel, making these repeaters by the thousand. They don't have to splice anything into the cable because the taps were already put in during the construction phase.

Shadowy American intelligence services recovering all of their snooping gear before Obama gets into office...damn shame.

All that hassle to cause commotion and outages by putting it there in the first place, and less than a year later they gotta get it back. Many years from now we will find its remains scattered across the ocean floor.

I wonder what the going rate is to have a ship drop anchor in the location of your choice? There must be somebody, if you ask around quietly, who would be willing to set up a grubby little shipping company with no real assets worth suing for and have their rusty crap freighter drag an anchor across whatever bit of seabed needs some accidental scraping.

Cables going to very close shore landing points between similar destinations tend to be pretty close together, saves significantly on the survey costs.

The article's timing of the outages (SeaMeWe 3&4 within minutes, FLAG half an hour later) and the relative proximity of the cable courses suggests either anchor drag or someone who cares enough to make it look that way.

The article's timing of the outages (SeaMeWe 3&4 within minutes, FLAG half an hour later) and the relative proximity of the cable courses suggests either anchor drag or someone who cares enough to make it look that way.

Someone managed to drop the anchor in the wrong place several times year ago, and now I'm confident that some big-jawed sea monster gnawed them. Nobody would be foolish enough to assume that the cables were cut intentionally, right?

So the best explanation we got so far is obviously wrong. Isn't there any other source of information about this, leaked documents, analysis based on the ship identification, pure speculations... Hell, even articles from conspiracy nuts would be better than what we already have.

The article claims that India is "82% Out of serivce". Something that I've always been curious about through is smaller inter country links and Internet connectivity. That is to say, if minor yet not insignificant links exist between Indian Telecoms and Pakistani Telecoms, and also between Pakistani Telecoms and Iranian Telecoms, and so on and so on... Then is it still possible due to the capabilities of packet switching, that computers in India could still communicate with ones in the US via a very, very long and convoluted path through many, many local connections?

Would any Slashdot Internet guru's have insight into the capabilities of the global packet switched network in the event of major single data connections going down? Is the network really as robust as we think?

The article claims that India is "82% Out of serivce". Something that I've always been curious about through is smaller inter country links and Internet connectivity. That is to say, if minor yet not insignificant links exist between Indian Telecoms and Pakistani Telecoms, and also between Pakistani Telecoms and Iranian Telecoms, and so on and so on... Then is it still possible due to the capabilities of packet switching, that computers in India could still communicate with ones in the US via a very, very long and convoluted path through many, many local connections?

From TFA:"A first appraisal at 7:44 am UTC gave an estimate of the following impact on the voice traffic..."

So the 82% applies to voice phone service, not computer data. Voice can still be packet-switched, sure... but usually isn't.

Not that conspiracy theories aren't a whole lot of fun and all, but as I'm yet to see a terribly credible motive*, "people are too optimistic about how good their tech works" is a pretty reasonable explanation.

(*: Remember, for a motive to be credible, it has to not merely "explain" the actions, but explain why the perpetrator thinks this is the best thing they could do with their time, or at least credibly close to the "best thing". Nothing I've seen eve

Apart from the fact that you'd have to have an unknown boat in foreign waters, I'd think it would be pretty easy to "fake a mistake". Drop your anchor in a place you know where the cable is, drag for about a quarter mile, wait for your contact monitoring the connection to send you a nondescript signal that it's down, then pick up and make a bead for international waters.

So how does a nation without a sophisticated coast guard figure this out? Is any western country going to care (that is, the ones who aren't in on it, if it is espionage?

Anyone who wants to tap any of these cables will do so on shore after paying a modest bribe. The Mediterranean is a shallow sea with lots of traffic. The cable operators route their cables close together near ports (because that's where they land) and are too cheap to plow them in. Thus it's easy for a dragged anchor to pull up a bunch of them.

During the cold war the US used induction to tap undersea wire cables running to the Soviet Union. This worked great because the device was undetectable. It didn't require severing the cable, instead the listening device was simply placed next to the cable.

Unfortunately for the US spy outfits, fiber optics can't be tapped the same way, induction doesn't work. To tap a fiber optics cable, you have to literally cut it and insert the new device.

Off the top of my head, I'd say the best way to tap a fiber optics line would be to cut it once, move to another location, cut it again, and install the monitoring equipment at the second location before the first cut is patched. By the time the first cut is patched the equipment will be functioning pretty much undetectably.

Why not tap it when the fiber optic cables come ashore? Besides the political problems of trying to get host countries to agree, an above water tap would be much easier to detect during and after installation.

I'm sure someone will point out that fiber optics can't be tapped, just like encryption can't be broken, and Windows doesn't have a backdoor for the NSA.

No, I'm pretty sure the problem with that plan is that you *can* tap fiber-optics. Without cutting an entire undersea cable to do it. You would have to cut into the cable, but I'm sure a good submarine (it's the US you're thinking is tapping, right?) could seal a section of cable off from the ocean and drain the water out, if that was its mission. From that point it'd just be sitting there a while until you managed to install whatever tap it is you want, seal the thing off, and leave.

I would like to point all the conspiracy theories who think everything in the world that goes wrong is to be laid at the feet of someone or something to a sobering article and some facts (yes I know facts are hard to comprehend when you're the type of person who thinks steel has to completely melt into a liquid for a building to collapse, but please, stick with me).

Page 34 is a good place to start, coupled with page 13. The fact is that there are hundreds of these cables across the world and many covering local areas are kept close to each other as can be seen on the map. Now look at page 34 and realise that the following can cause cable cuts:

So really, when there's so many cables (sometimes close together), when there's so many hazards for the cables, and when two cables a week requiring repairs is the norm does it really have to be an "OMG they're out to get us" drama, when instead of the average 2 cuts a week we have the oh so above average 3?

Finally, last time this happened, the boats responsible were caught via satellite and brought to justice:

Sorry guys, as much as I myself think making George Bush president twice is probably one of the worst things a population can ever do conspiracy theories about America trying to cut off Iran or whatever simply don't cut it (pun not intended). This is neither an odd occurance, nor is it a coincidence unless it's a coincidence that it happens every god damn week.

There is no reason a single trawler pulling big heavy nets along the ocean floor couldn't be responsible for damage to the whole lot, the cables are all shown as very close to each other, and despite the summary suggesting all 3 cuts happened within 5 minutes of each other, they didn't, the SeaMeWe cables were cut within 5 minutes of each other and FLAG about half hour later- that sounds very much like an anchor or trawler at play.

For all the anti-religious sentiment on Slashdot, many people here aren't half prone to believing in some rather far fetched ideas when it comes to stuff like this. Personally, I prefer to at least be consistent and believe that it's all a load of crap which usually it seems it is!

Shortly after the start of World War I, the British cut the cable going directly from Europe to America, so that all communications had to go via Britain. This allowed them to intercept the Zimmerman telegram (among other things), which was what caused the
US to declare war in 1917.

The first time it happened, it was "fishy" but it was fixed and we moved on. Now it is the second time in a relatively short time. The WORLD needs to investigate this and expose the perpetrators to the light of public media. If it was the U.S., I would like to know and why. If it was someone else, I would like to know who and why. This is stupid as hell and we shouldn't tolerate it!

...oh look at that on TV, another news story... what was I talking about again?

It be Sammy the Sea Sucker, a giant whale that has been legend for hundreds of years. He can sink down to the bottom of the ocean, and when Ol' Sammy sees something he don't like, he eats right through it.